Biography

by Fariba Bogzaran

Born in England in 1912 to a family of artists, Gordon Onslow Ford began painting at an early age. His grandfather, Edward Onslow Ford, was a renowned Victorian sculptor. Following the death of his father at age 14, he was sent to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The ocean affected him deeply and his early works depicted ocean scenes. The metaphor of taking a "voyage" later became an important aspect of his paintings.

Paris

While in the Navy, Onslow Ford visited Paris several times. In 1937, he resigned as a naval officer and moved to Paris to pursue painting full-time.

He studied with André L'hote for five weeks and studied with Fernand Léger for a short time. He continued visiting Léger, bringing his work to him often for critique.

Soon he met the Chilean artist Roberto Matta. Matta was studying architecture with le Corbusier and was an accomplished draftsman, making small drawings on the side. Onslow Ford, with his keen sense of seeing, admired Matta's drawings as "the most exciting images" he had seen in Paris. He encouraged Matta to continue with his drawings, which eventually inspired Matta to shift his direction from architecture to painting.

Onslow Ford and Matta became close friends, meeting and traveling frequently. They developed an ongoing dialogue about their ideas on art and metaphysics. They were also inspired by seeing the 1937 exhibit of Mathematical Objects in Paris in which one aspect of the Mathematical Object is visible while another aspect is left to the imagination of the viewer.

In 1938, Onslow Ford joined the Surrealist group in Paris and attended their meetings in Café deux Magots and besides Matta he became friends with Pierre Mabille, André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Esteban Francis, Wolfgang Paalen and Victor Brauner. His love of painting also led him to collect paintings and frequent visits to the studios of Picasso, Miro, de Chirico and André Masson.

As a Surrealist, Onslow Ford was initially interested in dreams; recording and making sketches of his own dream experiences. Early on, however, it became apparent to him that it was impossible to paint dreams and that the rendering of the dream image was merely a copy of a past event. Unlike many Surrealists who were interested in Freud's theory of dreams, Onslow Ford gravitated toward Carl Jung's idea of the Collective Unconscious and Ouspenski's theory of the Fourth Dimension. His artistic passion aimed toward expressing what lies beyond the personal in dreams.

In the summer of 1939, he rented a chateau at Chemilleu near the border of Switzerland, and invited several of his friends to stay for a couple of months. Among the friends were André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, Esteban Frances and Kay Sage. They spent the summer painting, exchanging ideas and reading poetry. They were visited regularly by their neighbor Gertrude Stein.

New York

Because of the outbreak of war, they all had to find their way to Paris and Onslow Ford had to move back to London. A majority of the Surrealist painter's went to New York and soon at the invitation of the Society for the Preservation of European Culture, Onslow Ford was also invited to join the surrealist in New York. As Onslow Ford was the only Surrealist who was an English speaker, he was invited to give a series of lectures at the New School for Social Research and organized four important Surrealist shows in 1941. These lectures and the four exhibitions of Surrealist works had a major influence on artists in New York City.¹

Had Onslow Ford chosen to stay in New York he would likely have become an important spokesperson for the Surrealists as well as a widely recognized artist. However, he chose to remove himself from what he perceived as an overtly commercial art environment and devote himself solely to painting.

Mexico

Onslow Ford met writer Jacqueline Johnson at his lectures in New York and they married in 1941. That same year, they decided to move to Mexico. He had first visited his Surrealist friend Wolfgang Paalen who was already living in Mexico. Paalen had resigned from Surrealism and was beginning a new publication called DYN , a journal about the development of contemporary art that acted as a dialogue between Europe and the Americas. DYN published articles by Onslow Ford, Pablo Picasso, Henri Moore, Marc Chagall, Albert Einstein, Octavio Paz, and many other contemporary artists and thinkers of the time. 2

After a short while in Mexico City, Onslow Ford and Johnson moved to the countryside and settled in the remote village, Erongaricuaro, which was populated by the Tarascan Indians and located on the shores of Lake Patzcuaro. This move enabled them to concentrate on and pursue their creative work with no interruption. Onslow Ford and Johnson lived in Erongaricuaro for six years (1941-1947) where they created, studied, learned the native way of living and participated in some native ceremonies. They stayed in constant connection with Wolfgang Paalen as Johnson assisted Paalen in editing DYN and contributed writings for the journal. During their stay they were also visited by many Surrealist friends including Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, Remedios Varo, Esteban Francis, Eva Sulzer, Alice Rahon, Pierre Mabille, Benjamin Péret and the poet Cesar Moro.

In 1947, Onslow Ford and Johnson moved to California, choosing the San Francisco Bay Area as the fertile soil where their new ideas would have a chance to grow. While in San Francisco he was invited to give a retrospective show at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1948). The title of the exhibit and the catalogue, Towards a New Subject in Painting, spoke to the fact that he was moving in a new direction in his art.

While living in San Francisco, Onslow Ford met the Greek painter Jean Varda and together they acquired the ferryboat Vallejo which they docked in Sausalito and converted into their studios. For many years the ferryboat was an inspiring haven for painters and artists and became a small cultural center on the waterfront. The gatherings on the boat were often written up in the San Francisco Chronicle by the well-known cultural commentator Herb Caen. In 1951, Onslow Ford with his friends Wolfgang Paalen, Lee Mullican and Jacqueline Johnson created an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art called "Dynaton." Dynaton, in Greek means "Possible." This exhibition was the launching ground for the "quest of the inner worlds," establishing firmly the future direction of Onslow Ford's artistic endeavors.

In the early 50's Onslow Ford was introduced to Asian philosophy and studied Hinduism with Haridas Chaudhuri and Buddhist scholar Alan Watts at the newly-formed Asian Academy (now called the California Institute of Integral Studies) in San Francisco.

Around this time he also met the venerable Zen master Hodo Tobase of the Soto Zen sect and began studying Chinese Calligraphy (1952-57). This entrance into Asian thought and practice had a profound influence on his paintings. Buddhist teachings of the Void and Emptiness as well as the practice of calligraphy initiated him into an exploration of the depths of the Mind and its images.

While walking in Muir Woods near Mill Valley, California, he discovered lines, circles and dots as the primal root of art, conveying the "underlying ground of existence." Lines, circles and dots became the elements by which he could travel into deeper layers of consciousness. ³

Inverness

In 1957, Onslow Ford and his wife Jacqueline Johnson acquired a large acreage of land in the virgin woods in the hills of Inverness, California. Ten years later they gave the majority of the land to Nature Conservancy for the sake of preserving the land.

At that time he began writing and in 1964 he published his first book Painting in the Instant. His wife passed away in 1976 as he was working on his second book Creation, which was published in 1978, and his major retrospective at the Oakland
Museum of California. He assumed a more solitary life.

In 1989, he met Fariba Bogzaran an artist, lucid dream researcher and faculty member at John F. Kennedy University. They began a series of dialogues on inner world paintings and inner world experiences. In her research she found a connection between Onslow Ford's paintings and inner world experiences in lucid dreaming and meditation.⁴ Onslow Ford collaborated with her on several of his books including Insights (1991), Ecomorphology (1994) and Once Upon a Time (1999). They co-founded a non-profit organization, the Lucid Art Foundation, to support a direction in art that expresses the "quest of the Inner-worlds." ⁵

In the past decade, Onslow Ford has had several retrospectives and solo exhibitions in the United States, Germany, Chile and Spain. In 1996, he inaugurated the John F. Kennedy University Arts and Consciousness Gallery and M.F.A. program in Berkeley, California and received an honorary doctorate degree in Fine Arts from the University in 1997.

Gordon Onslow Ford died peacefully in his home on November 9th, 2003 at 2:22pm from a stroke. He was 90. The Lucid Art Foundation will continue to support his legacy and vision, continuing the new direction which explores the depths of the inner worlds in art.

1. Martica Sawin's (1995). Surrealism in Exile. New York: MIT Press.

2. DYN has been recently re-published, Christian Kloyber (ed.). (2000). Wien/ New York: Springer.

3. Once Upon a Time: The Line Circle Dot World (1999). Inverness: Lucid Art Foundation.

4. Fariba Bogzaran (1996) Images of the Lucid Mind: A Phenomenological Study of Lucid dreaming and Modern Painting. Michigan: U.M.I.

5. See Lucid Art Foundation < www.lucidart.org >